Writings/Bibliography

A popular readership seeking worldly distraction or entertainment can all too easily misunderstand and abuse information intended for practitioners of a spiritual path. Therefore, Zeena has directed the majority of her religious and magical writings to her students actually engaged in the practical daily work of initiation. Consequently, the following bibliography is limited to those works more easily accessible to a general audience who have not yet committed themselves to a specific spiritual practice. This list does not include the many privately circulated teaching texts she composed for the Werewolf Order, Temple of Set, Sethian Liberation Movement and her private Buddhist meditation circle.

”The definitive guide to sexual alchemy ... Demons of the Flesh is a complete and thorough presentation of the history and techniques of radical self-transformation and enhancement through the practice of sacramental sex. The book is divided into three main sections covering the better known Eastern Tantric practices, the hermetic Western methods and a tutorial on the practical application of the methods described. The nature of magic is clearly stated by the authors in the very first chapter, as they introduce the reader to the Vama Marga Tantra of India:

‘It is a keystone of our understanding of magic’s underlying identity wth maya that magic is not a comfortable niche to be settled into forever. Instead it is a transitional vehicle, a means to an end. Magic can be the awakening agent that frees its practitioner from certain illusions, allowing the flash of insight that transcends all philopshical inquiry. Through magic, the mind can learn that there is not one indisputable reality. There is an endless multiplicity of realities...the direct confrontation with Maya that sorcery allows might be said to be magic’s primary objective. It is this confrontation that permits the sorcerer to viscerally understand how deeply his or her shifting subjective overlays influence that which he or she perceives – an understanding that may hasten the transformation of human sentience to divine consciousness.’

They also emphasize the need for ‘hands-on’ instruction, so to speak. Book-learning can only take one so far in these matters ... The Schrecks have been around the block a few times, and have more than a few pithy things to say about the Western tendency to exploit this phenomenon for petty personal gain. They offer an excellent critique of Aleister Crowley and the various museum-piece fraternities dedicated to preserving his legacy. ... There are numerous admonitions and warnings scattered throughout Demons of the Flesh, especially as regards the kind of parasitic explotiation that was Crowley’s specialty.

This is the Schrecks’ most refined and accomplished work. Meticulous research, extensive citations of original source documents and a modern, witty approach including the latest clinical research on the physiological effects of these practices enliven this book and place it on the top of the reading list for anyone interested in the subject. It presents not merely history and technique but a worldview and a way of life, a path to personal liberation much needed in a world that increasingly resembles the ‘Black Iron Prison’ of Philip K. Dick’s less pleasant revelations. Extreme conditions require extreme responses.” Alan Cabal, New York Press

”I have been reading the most enjoyable book, Demons of the Flesh: The Complete Guide to Left Hand Path Sex Magic, by the fabulously named Nikolas and Zeena Schreck.

Among much fascinating material, the Schrecks present a very plausible thesis: that Christ was in fact the model of a left-hand path sex magician. ‘Here was a magician who scandalized tribal elders by violently repudiating all the laws of orthodoxy and declaring himself a god. He teaches his followers that "the kingdom of heaven is within you," and consorts with outcast elements of society. He claims to be self-deified and instructs his students that they can also become as gods - much like the Tantric bodhisattva. ‘

The ‘fallen woman’ Mary of Magdalene: ‘Her presence at the turning points in the myth of Jesus support the theory that she is his hidden initiatrix, the female power who grants him his magical abilities. MM stands below the cross when he endures initiatory death; it is she who goes to his tomb to perform the rite of annointing the corpse, and she is also the first disciple to discover that his body has vanished. Finally, of all his disciples, Christ chooses to reveal his resurrection to her. If we read this tale as the fragmentary remnant of a carefully conceived initiatory myth encoded with magical symbolism - rather than as a historical chronicle of "true" events - MM's prominent position in the allegory becomes clear.’

Any taint of sex magic was of course purged in the next centuries, but can be found in other accounts: ‘Roman and Jewish opponents of the early Christian sect, for example, routinely characterized the disciples of Jesus as practicioners of a love cult whose rites included feasts that culminated in sexual promiscuity. Christ's teaching of unconditional Agape (Greek for "love"), was often presumed to include a mystical transubstantiation of sex not dissimilar from that practiced in Tantric group rituals.’

The Schrecks then look at the Nag Hammadi material and the Gnostic Gospels, such as The Gospel of Mary, which indicate lost and expurgated sexual rites.

‘The Gnostic texts repeatedly state that Mary of Magdalene grasps some core mystery of Christ's teaching better than any of his male disciples. She is referred to as "the woman who understood completely" and "the annointer" -- Jesus praises her as the disciple who most deeply comprehends his instruction. Indeed, it seems that the female initiates in Christ's circle all possess some secret knowledge that the males are lacking. Mary is only the foremost of seven female disciples who are said to be ‘strong by a perception which is in them,’ an advanced state of consciousness that the twelve male disciples readily acknowledge, although not without envy.’

The Gnostic metaphysic of early Christianity is a complete inversion/reversal of what became Christian doctrine: They deified the feminine principle (Sophia - hence the term , Philosophia, love of Sophia) and saw Jahweh as a malevolent demiurge. ‘It's unlikely that modern Christians will enthusiastically embrace the notion that Jesus and his original followers worshipped the being now despised under the name of "Satan" as a benevolent female snake-deity, while vilifying the being they currently know as "God" as a malignant demiurge.’ Mary Magdalene was his consort, shakti, initiatrix. Daniel Pinchbeck, author of Breaking Open Your Head and 2012.

”Occultists who endorse the concept of aeons (periods of magical or psychological significance) might agree with the authors that we are currently living in the Kali Yuga – an era of violence, strife, deceit and the breakdown of morality and order. Whereas many individuals might give up and seek salvation in self-deception, cynicism, consumerism, or escapist and immature notions of fulfillment in ‘life after death’, the Tantrick initiate revels in this apparent chaos and seeks to use it to his own ends – namely to realise his own divinity. ... The left hand path addresses the needs of those who seek enlightenment in the here-and-now; not in some uncertain mythical enlightenment supposedly conferred by abnegation of the senses. Such an approach explicitly denies embracing the status-quo or conventional beliefs and morality. For this reason, the left hand path is one of the most feared, reviled, misunderstood, and potentially exciting spiritual paths available for individuals brave and self-aware enough to understand and embrace it. Demons of the Flesh provides the most comprehensive survey of the left hand path currently available. Despite the prurient hype on the back cover, it is more concerned with using sex as a means of both liberation and self-deification than simply trying out every sexual technique for physical gratification. The authors clarify that the sex magician should differentiate between his carnal activities and the use of sex for sacred or magical purposes.The book provides a thorough overview of the left hand path in all its manifestations, from its origins in the India of several thousand years ago to its current form. It covers the fundamental principles of working with the ‘feminine daemonic’ or Shakti principle (in the Tantrick cosmology, the universe is seen as the divine coupling of Shiva, the male principle, and Shakti, the female principle - the resolution of polarities); the defiance of convention; and the possibility of becoming the god of one’s own universe. The feminine principle is described in all its myriad forms, from Venus like sensuality through to the dark destructiveness of the Kali, Inana, Ishtar, Astarte and Babalon archetypes – temple prostitutes, blood sated hags and aggressive warriors latterly manifesting as the Valkyries of Nordic mythology. Many a Wiccan eyebrow may be raised when contemplating the Goddess in all her guises; and some readers may find speculation that Jesus Christ was a sex magician of the first rank, aided in his rites by the prostitute Mary Magdalen difficult to accept. The Tantrick path is of necessity elitist, necessitating standing apart from the pashu herd. The savvy magician realises he springs from the herd himself, initially bound by the accident of his birth, his subsequent upbringing and the morals of the society around him. He seeks to liberate himself consciously and subconsciously from this conditioning. Demons of the Flesh provides extensive and detached analysis of many of the illuninaries who brought Tantra to the West, notably P B Randolph, the misguided H P Blavatsky, Gurdjieff, the Fraternitas Saturnite, the O.T.O., Crowley, Jack Parsons, Kenneth Grant, Ron Hubbard and many others. Lesser known figures such as Georges Bataille and Maria de Naglowska are also given their due. Intriguingly, certain figures, such as Church of Satan founder Anton LaVey, who did much to break convention and advocate sexual freedom for magical purposes, are downplayed. The analysis is trenchant and fascinating - indeed, many sacred cows are not merely slaughtered but turned into psychic fast food for the delectation of the Tantrick truth seeker. Aleister Crowley is depicted as something of an inadequate, seeking to supplant Christianity with his (heavily Christianised) Thelema. Magicians should consider whether the misogynist Beast 666, with his endless financial problems, petty bitterness and other character defects, offers a fitting role model. Far more interesting trailblazers include rocket man Jack Parsons. Parsons’ celebrated Babalon Working resulted not only in the arrival of the ‘elemental’ Marjorie Cameron, but potentially the release of energies resulting in the Atomic Bomb and the counter-culture of the Sixties. Kenneth Grant famously said that Parsons opened a door and 'something flew in'. ... Grant, (protégé of Crowley who took Thelema in a totally different direction and who was also responsible for creating the legend of Austin Osman Spare, himself a pretty effective sex-magician), comes across as one of the most avid (though not always the most lucid) exponents of the left hand path and the feminine daemonic.The book is nicely presented with many excellent and relevant illustrations (it’s a shame the book’s budget didn’t stretch to colour in this respect), and for the most part superbly written. .. the slightly academic and far from histrionic approach works well in tackling what for many could be difficult reading. The last three chapters cover the practicalities of sex magical practice; group workings and orgies; and Sado-Masochism. These are not simply ‘just add water’ techniques and rituals, but provide scope for further investigation. ... The magician of the left hand path is exhorted, Socrates-like, to know himself and understand his beliefs and desires. This cannot be achieved by slavishly following any occult ‘authority’, no matter what their reputation. ... In summary, an excellent and illuminating book, likely to remain the definitive work on the subject for many years to come. Of necessity, it covers strong stuff. Those of a conventional disposition have been warned.” Blonde-to-die-for (UK)

Distributed at University of Queensland, Australia, for comparative religion presentation.

Studying the short, brutal history of the human race reveals that we have always been a compulsively violent, confused, and self-destructive species. One need not be an historian to observe that the current state of mankind at the dawn of the twenty-first century has descended to an unprecedented low of spiritual bankruptcy. The daily news offers a ceaseless cornucopia of catastrophes to prove this point. Faced with the endless parade of human folly it is hard not to believe that humanity, blinded by the egotistical and anthropocentric cult of so-called rationality it has adopted for centuries, has never been so enmeshed in empty materialism, so obviously adrift without rudder or compass to guide its way.

Estranged to the point of schizoid disassociation from the organic cycles of nature of which mankind is only a small part, is it any wonder that so many suffer from higher levels of clinical depression than have ever been recorded before? We exist in a social environment through which the chilly winds of premonitory disaster blow ever more fiercely. Only the most delusive optimist could imagine that the current whirlpool of social collapse, economic breakdown, cynical abuse of military power in the name of “democracy” and “freedom”, and ongoing ecological suicide is leading to any benevolent conclusion. Faced with such toxic psychic weather, it comes as no surprise that mankind’s reaction to its own self-implosion is to bury its collective ostrich head in the sand. Ever-growing populations of the industrialized Western world, and even many in developing countries striving to become “developed”, now prefer to drug themselves with the spiritually empty standards of 24 hour entertainment. Addicting itself to the new brain-numbing electronic heroin called the Internet, the human animal increasingly retreats from the world of physical phenomena into a voluntary house arrest of safe virtual reality and “home entertainment” in hopes of soothing anxieties and the sense of ontological dislocation. We divert our attention from our own demise with the thousands of other distractionary Soma devices that our hypercapitalist Brave New World supplies us with so that we may drown our consciousness in ceaseless triviality, propaganda, advertising, and other modes of distraction. Millions of minds fed on such a poisonous diet of psychic junk food can never attain the clarity needed to free themselves from the role of obedient consumer serf that they have been assigned.

Faced with the global crisis that descends on mankind, no leader of vision or moral integrity has emerged with a solution. The social, religious, and economic institutions that once propped up an illusion of civilization are in a hopeless state of decay that inspires no confidence in their continued relevance. The poorly educated masses struggle through this period of chaos with no sturdier philosophical foundation than can be obtained from the specious mass media offal they consume. The academy and what passes for an intellectual elite have abandoned any pretense of seeking the truth, having succumbed to the smug nihilism of postmodernism, an anti-wisdom that proudly severs itself from the nourishment of all tradition and spiritual authority in favor of the glib jargon of politically correct structuralism and deconstruction. Facile irony and sarcasm have become the customary response to any authentic spiritual yearning. Derisive if nervous laughter is the standard empty reaction to any reference to the sacred, the numinous, and the religious in the superficial contemporary world.

In such an environment, which largely shuns spiritual knowledge and transrational modes of thought as antiquated superstition, unscientific lunacy, repressive dogma, or at the very least superfluous wastes of time with no monetary value, few would suggest that the root cause of humanity’s current crisis is essentially spiritual in nature. The ancient idea that the ultimate solution to mankind’s folly lays in the suprarational region of our soul and not in the cold calculations of our logic-strangled cerebrum must seem like quaint madness to the contemporary intellectual’s mind. However, the essentially spiritual causes that shape the inauspicious conditions ruling our time have long been universally recognized by those who have disentangled themselves from the bonds of egocentric mentation to experience the deeper patterns of Being that lay under the veils of illusion.

In Hindu metaphysics, it is understood that we are now living in the dawn of the Kali Yuga, which can be translated to mean “dark aeon”, “dark world-age” or “unlucky age”. According to the Vedic tradition of Yugas, human development descends and ascends again and again through a cycle of four eternally recurring ages, beginning with the Krita or Satya Yuga, a golden age of truth. Having passed through the subsequent Treta and Dvapara ages, periods of progressive spiritual deterioration leading away from the primeval aeon of purity and perfection, we have now entered the final stage of dissolution embodied by the Kali Yuga. When the Kali Yuga comes to its end, the cosmic cycle will begin anew, a revivified golden age rising from the ashes of our current dark age. These cycles also correspond to the changing internal states of being of the initiate on his or her path toward liberation in which a Kali Yuga of the soul must be conquered before the initiate’s own golden age is revealed. Until then, however, the traditionally described symptoms of the Kali Yuga that we can see all around us today (spiritual bankruptcy, mindless hedonism, breakdown of all social structure, greed and materialism, unrestricted egotism, afflictions and maladies of every kind) will prevail. (Similar ideas of terminal world-ages are expressed in the Nothern Ragnarok, the Aztec Fifth Sun, the Christian Apocalypse, and the Gnostic Aion of Typhon.)

It is the nature of the Kali Yuga that most human beings are now held back from spiritual liberation due to the gravity of inertia, apathy and laziness, (known in Sankrit as the quality of tapas) that overwhelms this age. Despite this seemingly gloomy prognosis, there is a way out of this predicament for those with the will and stamina to awaken from the rampant lethargy within and without them to take action. Even in the dark age, a few have the heroic disposition to break with the illusion that they are time and space-bound separate egos trapped in the specific conditions of the zeitgeist around them. These heroic swimmers against the stream of time can free themselves to an expanded, timeless, and non-dual consciousness no longer dependent on the cycle of the Yugas. Such a being is said to be jivanmukta, or liberated in this lifetime; one who has transcended the petty, temporal and dualistic perspective and fears of the ego to realize the ecstasy of the transpersonal and divine state of consciousness obscured beneath the normative white noise of self-absorption.

At the same time that Christianity was securing its foothold in the West, India saw the re-emergence of an ancient mystical tradition within the Tantric yoga movement which promised to be a method of spiritual discipline especially suited to the inauspicious conditions of the Kali Yuga. This heretical secret tradition was passed on from guru, or spiritual preceptor, to chela, or spiritual aspirant, after an arduous period of testing to determine the constitution and suitability of the initiate. Known alternately as vamachara or vamamarga, this practice begins, like most other yogic paths, with the mastery of meditation leading to the arrest of the normal discursive and random human thought process that prevents a pure and undistorted perception of reality. Only after this difficult phase of necessary mental purification, can the vamamarga initiate proceed to the far more radical practices specifically designed to be an extreme method of liberation appropriate to the extremity of the Kali Yuga. These vamamarga practices include, among many others, the breaking of social conditioning and taboo, the exaltation of the cosmic feminine, the utilization of the physical body and sexual ecstasy as a means of religious devotion and non-dual consciousness alteration, the deliberately transgressive taking of a self-outcasted and stigmatized mode of life that violates social, religious, behavioral, and cultural norms, all designed to liberate the initiate from the fetters that bind the majority of humans from their hidden divine natures.

In the 19th century, when the first Europeans began to take alarmed note of the secretive vamamarga cult of ecstasy, they translated the phrase vamamarga (literally “left way”) into the phrase “left-hand path”.

The left-hand path of Tantricism differs from right-hand path Tantra, or dakshinamarga, due to the former’s celebration of transgressive practices, sexual rites, and its emphasis on the female power, known as Shakti. Although it was said in medieval times that the left way practice was the only effectual means of liberation in the Kali Yuga, evidence suggests that the practices that came to be known as left-hand path actually preceded the development of right-hand path Tantra, which appears to have been developed as a tamed and whitewashed later version of the discipline. Some have referred to the left-hand path’s sexual and bodily devotions as “wet” in contrast to the “dry” methodology of the right-hand path. Another metaphoric description historically used is that of the comparison between wine and milk; the former representing the ecstatic, fiery, and intoxicating effects of the left-hand path and the latter representing the soothing, methodical, and gentler approach to the right-hand path practice.

Traditional texts describing the dire conditions of the Kali Yuga specify that spiritual truth will deteriorate or be completely misunderstood due to the low level of spiritual awareness in the age of darkness. Students of comparative and alternative religion will observe how popularized, simplified, and delusive forms of ersatz spirituality proliferate in the confusion of the modern world, especially since the mainstream revival of occultism and a fashionable interest in Eastern mysticism coincided during the 1960s. This naive and often misinformed pseudo-religiosity is a typical symptom of Kali Yugic deterioration. The progressive degradation of what was once mankind’s highest and most ennobled aspiration towards genuine spiritual enlightenment into hundreds of fraudulent personality cults, historically inaccurate “do-it-yourself” recreational religions, or largely fanciful role-playing games utilizing half-understood religious concepts typifies the Kali Yugic collapse of authentic spiritual tradition. Some sincere spiritual seekers are drawn to such inauthentic manifestations of the Kali Yuga as the New Age, Wicca, pop culture occultism, so-called satanism, Fundamentalist evangelical Christianity, the Hare Krishsna movement, UFO cults, Scientology, bogus Castaneda-style “shamanism”, and many other corrupt contemporary phenomena that offer counterfeit imitations of genuine spiritual knowledge. But none of these can lead to liberation from the bonds of the age of darkness, cut off as they are from the integral esoteric roots necessary to true enlightenment.

Even the left-hand path tradition has been degraded in the past hundred years or so by the ignorant forces of inertia that hold sway over the Kali Yuga. Because the left-hand path was condemned in the once popular writings of Theosophy founder Helena Petrovna Blavatsky as “evil” and “black magic”, her erroneous and unfounded concepts were adopted thoughtlessly by other esoteric authors. Indeed, feminist scholars in search of a relevant thesis topic might well consider how the originally gynocentric feminine tradition of the left-hand path has been distorted and/or abused by blatantly sexist males in modern times. Among these was Aleister Crowley, who severely disfigured understanding of the left-hand path in the Western world by characterizing it as the way of selfishness and egoism, an idea which can proven to be false by referring to the original left-hand path Tantras, which continually emphasize ego-transcendence as the key to liberation. As the inaccurate idea that the left-hand path was “selfish black magic” continued to spread like a meme it reached its nadir when Anton LaVey, proprietor of the Church of Satan, adopted the phrase to describe his crude, atheistic, misogynistic and misanthropic form of Satanism, which is in fact the very opposite of the feminine, joyful, mystical and transcendent nature of the true left-hand path tradition. Since the 1960s, many other misguided “Satanists” and “black magicians” (The Temple of Set, Order of the Nine Angles, etc.) have wrongfully appropriated the phrase “left-hand path” to define their puerile antics, without ever bothering to actually research the ancient tradition of the left-hand path they claimed to represent. Just as misguided, but at the opposite pole of “Satanic” misrepresentations of the left-hand path, is the whitewashed and anodyne version of “Tantra” taught by contemporary Western New Age devotees, which bears little resemblance to the transgressive energy of the historical left-hand path heritage.

In the 21st century, a revival of interest and practice of the genuine left-hand path tradition - rather than the bastardized 20th century distortions - has begun to take root in the West. As a long-time practitioner and teacher of the techniques of left-hand path liberation, I am pleased to see that serious scholars are now focusing their attention on this misunderstood and misrepresented branch of spiritual tradition. As the authentic left-hand path movement continues to flourish in the West, I foresee that increased collaboration between scholars and left-hand path initiates will produce a fruitful new understanding of the sinister way to enlightenment as a powerful tool of transpersonal liberation. Scholarship and spiritual initiation are united in their common quest for impartial truth. By adhering to the highest standards of objective scholarship, left-hand path initiates can avoid falling into the trap of subjective fantasy concerning the history of our religious discipline. By attempting to understand the ecstatic insights of left-hand path illumination, such modern scholars of the left-hand path as Thomas Cleary, Georg Feuerstein, Miranda Shaw, David Gordon White, and others, have already redeemed their research from being reduced to dry and passionless abstraction through their sympathetic portrayal of the left-hand tradition.

By shining the “masculine” light of logical research into the formerly secretive “feminine” mystery of the left-hand path, a symbolic union of what Carl Jung termed the “contrasexual” forces of Shiva (pure unmanifest consciousness) and Shakti (kinetic initiatory power) can bring illumination into our current age of darkness.

***

Zeena Schreck is the founder and spiritual leader of the Sethian Liberation Movement, a left-hand path religious movement, co-author of Demons of the Flesh: The Complete Guide to Left Hand Path Sex Magic, and a teacher of the Liberation in this Lifetime course.

When one reads Zeena's chapter on Heaven's Gate, one can't help noticing her tongue-in-cheek analogy to the comparative research she's done with similar quasi-religious groups she's been involved in herself. The astute reader will observe the resemblance between her description of the leader/follower dynamic in Heaven's Gate and that found in the similarly dysfunctional Church of Satan and Temple of Set.

One of the most flagrant examples of the ”Satanic” fantasies endemic to ToS is their emphasis on a wholly imagined left-hand path and Sethian component to Nazism, an idea the Sethian Liberation Movement refutes as a subjective chimera with no basis in fact. The ToS fantasy of a hidden stream of ”knightly and honorable” Nazi occultism is embodied in its Order of the Trapezoid, yet another fictional Church of Satan construct re-instituted by Aquino in his own organization.
The Order of the Trapezoid, or O.Tr., presented as an ”elite within an elite” and governing core of the TOS, was primarily inspired by Aquino’s gullible reading of LaVey’s The Satanic Rituals (1972), which posits, without any evidence, the existence of a secret cabal of Nazi Satanists and an invented rite called Die Elektrischen Vorspiele, authored by LaVey, still practiced by ToS to this day. 1 The ToS Order of the Trapezoid combines this with an idealized and naive interpretation of Heinrich Himmler’s cranky SS race-mysticism, motifs and invented language drawn from author H.P. Lovecraft’s horror fiction, a penchant for pseudo-Arthurian pomposity, an ahistorical and subjective rendition of Odinic runology, and even elements from the science fiction films Forbidden Planet and Star Wars. The result is an occult role-playing game of such incoherence it almost defies description.

Some current and former ToS members seeking affiliation with the Sethian Liberation Movement falsely assume that such ideas have relevance to our movement, necessitating our disavowal of this notion. We mention this because it’s safe to say that if, during your time in ToS, you found the above ideas appealing, you would find the Sethian Liberation Movement’s insistence on rigorous historical verification and research to be daunting. At the very least, you might find our standards not fair to the sense of one’s own cherished post-modern ”individual versions” of reality, history and theology.
The Sethian Liberation Movement’s objection to the ToS promulgation of fanciful Nazi-Satanic ideas is not based on moral grounds or political correctness. Rather, we reject these concepts on the basis of historical inaccuracy and theological inconsistency with our religion. There are no forbidden or taboo subjects for Sethians, but the Sethian Liberation Movement does insist on precision. For the record, lest you approach the Sethian Liberation Movement with any lingering enthusiasm for this particularly absurd element of ToS ideology, please note that there is absolutely no historical connection whatever between Nazism and the Sethian left-hand path. (And just to be complete, nor is there any historical connection between Nazism and Satanism, for that matter.)

It should be obvious that the male-dominated, caste-based, and rigidly dualist National Socialist ideology, with its emphasis on "family values" cannot be reconciled with the sexual adoration of the feminine, the breaking of caste and social conventions, and the radical non-dualism essential to the left-hand path’s way to liberation. National Socialists would have vilified such transgressive practices for the same reasons that India’s Aryan Brahmins revile the left-hand path to this day. While the idealized ToS literature depicts the SS as a ”good idea gone wrong,” the historical record makes it clear that, from its inception, the SS persecuted and arrested German esotericists, mystics, sex magicians, and even sympathetic rune revivalists, making it a poor model for any kind of left-hand path practitioner.

[...]What we discovered in all of our research, investigating, infiltrating and interviewing was that all the information we gathered did surprisingly little to pierce the enigma of Parsons.

A running theme, one of many, began to develop. All of the surviving Parsons associates and friends we interviewed, mostly people in their seventies and eighties, casting their memories back some forty years, would have the same few observations about him which basically consisted of, "He was very quiet, soft-spoken. He always dressed in black. He had a funny shuffle in his walk. Had a distant look in his eye." Then the interviewee would always follow that by saying, glancing over at Nikolas, "In fact, you’re a lot like him!"

By the second meeting they’d go a little further and say, "Y’know, The two of you really remind me of them." (Parsons and Cameron). As we continued to be continually compared to the subjects of our research, we began to think of them as doppelgängers.

The variety of types sharing their memories was vast, which included scientists, occultists, science fiction writers, filmmakers and artists. And they were all quite advanced in age. We found ourselves racing against time, illnesses, biblical style floods, brush fires and even death and death-bed confessions to reach Parsons’ colleagues and associates while still breathing. By being drawn into his orbit we noticed that bizarre occurrences and synchronicity became an every day experience.

[...]

Having exhausted everyone we could find, we realized the missing link in all of this was Parsons’ widow, Cameron. We knew she was more than reclusive but we also knew that only she could answer our last remaining questions.

After surviving the conspiracy and intrigue of Parsons’ death, his mate Cameron immersed herself in the magical world of the O.T.O. and her own inspired paintings. Her primary circle of influence was in the art world of Los Angeles where she became friends with the young filmmakers Kenneth Anger and Curtis Harrington, eccentric Samson deBrier, and erotic author Anais Nin. Samson deBrier was famous for his cultural salons of the fifties. These gatherings were attended by the most avant garde actors, writers and personalities in Hollywood including Marlon Brando, Maila ”Vampira” Nurmi, James Dean and the very young Jack Nicholson. It was out of these congregations that the inspiration for Kenneth Anger’s film Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome was born.

Thus, it was in that very house that this film was shot with a sampling of the bohemian personalities who frequented the deBrier abode. The eclectic cast included Samson deBrier, Anais Nin, Curtis Harrington and Cameron. I consider Kenneth Anger to be a sort of Magus of celluloid, having used this medium for his personal magical workings and for the subversive purpose of creating his own artistic arena rather than concerning himself with the standards and fads of corporate filmland. He has inspired other filmmakers whose names in many cases are more recognizable than his. Of those more well-publicized filmmakers there even exist some who maintain that their vision, technique and style stem entirely from their own imagination, believing their secret inspiration to be undetected. Such is Anger’s far reaching, but hidden, influence on the mundane world.

Kenneth Anger, flamboyant Thelemite and founding member of the Church of Satan, has been outspoken about his magical beliefs, claiming to have had an interest in Crowley since his early teens. In fact, it was Curtis Harrington who originally introduced Anger to Crowley in their early twenties with the gift of the Crowley biography The Great Beast by John Symonds. Harrington had received this book under strange circumstances. While on a visit to London as a young man, he had come across the book in a bookstore. When he paid for it, the owner of the bookstore gave him what he though was his change. When he looked down to count it, the change equaled the total sum that Harrington originally paid. With a pointed look in his eye, the shop keeper indicated that Harrington should regard this as a gift. The shopkeeper, noted that Harrington understood the amount returned to him was the same as he originally tendered and without speaking proceeded to wrap the book up for Harrington to carry away. To this day, Harrington is of the firm belief that that particular book seller felt this was something he was meant to possess and gave him that message by means of providing him with the book.

Interestingly enough, one of the many meanings of the ancient Egyptian word Xeper is "exchange." This peculiar exchange which the book merchant passed along to Harrington, in turn affected the entire resurgence of Crowley interest in the sixties. This can directly be traced to the fact that when Harrington passed this book on to Anger, much in the same way that he had received it, at no cost, he inspired Anger to become one of Aleister Crowley’s most outspoken exponents. One of Anger’s most directly Crowleyan films, Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome, as I’ve mentioned previously, featured Cameron and Harrington.

Nevertheless, when I asked Anger (my godfather, whom I’ve know all my life) in a phone call for any feedback about Cameron and any magical aspects of their friendship, he snapped that he didn’t ever want to talk about anything to do with magic, Satanism, Crowley, LaVey, the supernatural or anything related ever again and hung up on me. This was the only time in my life that Anger reacted as harshly and abruptly with me as this. Clearly, something about what I asked in relation to Cameron struck a nerve that had some mysterious negative association. I’ll never know what triggered this response, and we’ve never discussed it again.

Kenneth Anger and Curtis Harrington were fast friends during the time shortly after Parsons’ death and as aesthetes, both found themselves captivated by Cameron and her artwork. It has been said by many who knew her that while Cameron wasn’t much of a true beauty, there was something captivating about her presence. This presence inspired both Anger and Harrington to feature her and her magical artwork in their early films. While Anger’s Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome has been described, I think I should mention here Curtis Harrington's The Wormwood Star, Games and Night Tide.. The short film The Wormwood Star is a particularly exceptional documentation of Cameron and her paintings in the haunted environment of Cameron’s own home of that time. This short feature is filmed entirely outdoors during an intensely bright, sunny day. The image of Cameron emerges to impart the unsettling feeling to the watcher that he has voyeuristically caught a glimpse of an apparition in broad daylight. Fortunately, Cameron’s paintings are preserved on film, for immediately after the filming she destroyed every last painting.

By 1995 Curtis Harrington was still on friendly terms with Cameron. Harrington was one of the individuals we interviewed for this project who had seen the Parsons/Cameron legend develop to the present day and understood the importance of having her participation. He volunteered to help put us in contact with her, warning us that she would not likely agree but that he would do his best. First he gave us her address and we wrote to her. After this letter went unanswered for months, we decided to drive to the address to try determining if she really lived there.

Once we arrived at the address, we couldn’t believe anyone really lived there. A pinkish-beige, ramshackle, single dwelling house set back from the street in the middle of a dilapidated part of Hollywood appeared to have been abandoned. The shrubbery was a dry, overgrown clutter and there were small children’s plastic toys, sand buckets and shoes decorated with cobwebs and dry leaves, all of which looked as faded as if they had been bleaching in the sun for years. We really weren’t sure that this, in fact, was the right address. Later we verified with Harrington that it was the correct address as he occasionally would send Cameron cards, which she received. The children’s toys and shoes actually belonged to her grandchildren. We then attempted to hand deliver a follow up letter which also went unanswered.

Finally, Harrington gave us her unlisted phone number, but asked that we not tell her where we got it. When we decided I should be the one to make the call, Harrington informed me that she had just undergone brain surgery and that the last time he spoke with her she was a little out of it due to smoking a lot of "pot" to aid her recovery from the surgery. When I made the call, she answered and I reminded her of who I was from the two letters she had received. She was just as mysterious and adamantly unwilling to discuss anything in relation to her late husband as I had been warned of. When she asked how I got her phone number since she had just changed it and hardly anyone had it, I said something noncommittal to keep Harrington out of the picture. That didn’t help much as she immediately answered, "Well, it doesn’t matter, I bet Curtis gave it to you. I know Curtis must have given it to you ‘cause barely anyone has this number." She said she still didn’t want to talk about Jack and that I was wasting my time. I explained to her that there were just a couple of very simple questions that we haven’t found the answers to, for example if and where Parsons was interred. She said, "Well, I wouldn’t tell you, even if I did know." Shocked at the implication that even she didn’t know where he was, elicited a new question from me, ”You mean you don’t know were he’s buried?” Then she became irate and said, "I know." Her ambiguous and inconsistent responses to anything I said made me realize that she was really much more unfocused that I had even anticipated.

The call didn’t last more than ten minutes. Only days after I spoke to her, she returned to the hospital for surgery related complications and died. After searching for Cameron for so long and then speaking to her so soon before her demise gave me an extraordinary sense of exchange from her to me. I visualized the phone receiver against each of our mouths, the breath from her words passing through the wires.

We also interviewed an extremely ill Samson deBrier about Jack and Cameron only a few days before he died. The interview was conducted at the famous house where he had once held his salons, and where Cameron and Curtis Harrington had appeared in Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome forty years earlier. Again, both Nikolas and I had a link to deBrier and his house that began long before we met. In 1982, Nikolas had considered renting deBrier’s guest house on that same property. In 1987, just prior to meeting Nikolas, I also nearly moved in to the same guest house.

We attended Cameron’s memorial service in Venice, California in Summer 1995. As we looked at the many photos of Cameron and Parsons together, we were struck by the charisma (in the true magical sense) the pair conveyed. And at one point, standing outside in the bright sunlight, we held a glass framed photograph of the two looking at each other and noticed our reflection in the glass superimposed on their visage.[...]

To place a final punctuation on the Spandau Working, I paid a visit to the Pergamon altar at the Pergamon Museum. The museum was fairly fresh in my memory as being significant for the Pergamon Working, which Don Webb conducted after the Munich Conclave in 1997. I felt this would be a good place to close a circle within the Berlin Experience, a cycle which began with my decision to return to Europe following the Munich Conclave. The Pergamon altar is reputed by many a visitor to create a “still, religious” feeling in the museum. Even the cleaning woman at the pension where I was staying attested to this from her own experience. Naturally I thought that if a simple person like her had such an impression, it must truly be something to behold.

I arrived in the mid-afternoon to find the altar immediately upon entering the museum’s main entrance. There were crowds of tourists scattered along the vast steps leading up to the altar. After careful examination of the entire room that housed the altar, I found myself disappointed that I hadn’t had the spiritual sensation that I’d been anticipating. I attempted to analyze or justify why this might be. Although my purpose was to visit this one exhibit (the Pergamon Altar), I wandered through the other wings of the museum with questions in mind about the Pergamon Altar and its lack of effect for me. As I made my way through a large doorway I looked to my right to find the classic blue tiles and roaring lion of an ancient Babylonian gate.

Compelled by the image of the snarling lion’s head, wondering what might this be, I continued until I was completely inside the room and turned to find a huge Babylonian gate. This, I realized, was the real reason why I had to visit the Pergamon Altar. To remind me that sometimes that which one seeks is not always what one needs, but that it can lead one to what one truly needs in the process. I quickly learned that I had stumbled upon the Gate of Ishtar (of all things). Warrioress and goddess of ancient sexual initiatrixes. It was at this unexpected collision with the ancient Babylonian Gate that I felt the numinous chill, the pulsating in my solar plexus I’d anticipated earlier. This same Gate of Ishtar would eventually play an important role in the formal inauguration of the Order of Babalon during the North Solstice Gathering and in the naming of the Order of Babalon's newsletter.

Because of the spontaneous happenstance of discovering the Gate of Ishtar, and the many similar surprise elements which brought me to the Zitadelle for the Spandau Working, I decided that it was there at the gate that I would place that final punctuation on my Working. As I meditated on visualizing the magical sealing wax to the Spandau Working, I took a photo of the very lion which first drew my attention. The lion which is eternally depicted alongside Inanna. It was this photo which I used as the cover of my proposal for the Magistry of the ToS entitled The Lion’s Gate. The document to the Temple of Set Masters outlining what my Work would be as a Magistra Templi foreshadowing certain events that couldn’t have been well received among the “Elect”, yet went conspicuously, and selectively, ignored until the Storm broke.

There was also an ongoing energy of Eros which had penetrated the entire journey, as evidenced by the magnetic effect drawing the necessary participants to aid me. This erotic energy culminated at the Gate of Ishtar when I realized that this final part of the Spandau Working required one last ingredient...[...]

Many modern occultists reading the title of this essay might be disturbed by my use of the word “tradition” in connection with the left-hand path. If so, that’s because far too many have wishfully imagined that the left-hand path is some kind of obscure playground in which one can just make everything up as one goes along. In this playground, one can state that the left-hand path is just a fancier way of saying “Satanism”, or “Black Magic” or “Individualism”, or “Isolate Intelligence”, or any of the hundreds of erroneous things that ignorant children are likely to say when they use words that they only vaguely understand. Compared to that childish free for all, “Tradition” doesn’t sound like very much fun. But one of my religious duties as High Priestess of Seth, and one of the religious duties of all authentic Sethians, is to challenge false ideas with the stark facts of reality.

The foundation of the Storm signifies wake up time for the left-hand path in the West. And part of that awakening will entail a return to a rich tradition of sinister illumination that is utterly unknown to many of those who have fancied themselves to be “left-hand path” initiates. Some may assume that my idea of tradition has something to do with conservatism, which is the desire to play it safe, and preserve things as they are. Conservatism is far from what I’m aiming at in proclaiming the establishment of a Sethian left-hand path tradition in the West as one of the first missions of the SLM. In fact, in establishing such a tradition, true to the spirit of sacred transgression and holy subversion that is essential to both Seth and the left-hand path, we are opening a door that enlightens through endangerment, that awakens through risk and peril: this is a radical (from Latin radix, root, implying how deep a change is required) enterprise that is the very opposite of conservatism. To understand the epochal task of building a tradition that we have before us, I’ll quote one of the world’s most valuable magical books, Webster’s New Universal Unabridged Dictionary. Webster’s third definition of “tradition” is “the delivery of opinions, doctrines, practices, rites, and customs from generation to generation by oral communication.” Pay attention to the words “from generation to generation by oral communication”, which is the indispensable medium of conveying the left-hand path from initiate to initiate.

The Eastern left-hand path has long had such a tradition. The Western left-hand path, in my estimation, is a barely understood, extremely delicate phenomenon that has only just begun. It has been my unique curse and my singular blessing for the past 40 years to see firsthand how the false “left-hand path” of the West has been concocted and distorted by a series of charlatans and even worse, the followers of charlatans, truly the blind leading the blind ever further away from the reality of the sinister way. This is one of the reasons why I feel such a personal sacred responsibility to do what I can to awaken the sleeping serpent of the true left-hand path tradition in the West. If this serpent-wrapped tree of sinister knowledge is to flourish it must be rooted in the deep soil, the radix of tradition. Each of us, the Sethian sorcerers of the SLM, have something to contribute to this Working, but because we are a world movement, rather than an exclusive secret society, we will gladly work with any initiate of a true left-hand path tradition to realize this vision. This article will not lay out the exact nature of the Sethian left-hand path tradition. First, I’d like to shine a bright light on some of the challenges I’ve observed during my own quest that will surely face us as we undertake this titanic goal.

Religious, archaeological, and mythological sources documenting the nature of our Patron suggest that the entity we understand as Seth and his equivalents impact our initiation as an active Power (i.e., left-hand path or Shakti) as opposed to a passive Being (i.e., right-hand path or Shiva). Therefore the Sethian religious approach to initiation is a discipline which embraces the dynamics between apparent opposites such as male-female, absolute-relative, chaos-order, pleasure-pain, cause-effect, mind-body in an attempt to draw wisdom from something greater than the mere sum of the two polarities. The Sethian initiate consciously uses everything at his or her disposal in the physical world in order to transmute and eventually transcend the limitations of that world. This is very different than the escapist retreat from the reality of the physical world sought by many magicians, even those who mistakenly define themselves as masters of the left hand path. Because our goal is Sethian self-gnosis during our mortal existence, the Sethan initiate also has an acute awareness of the passage of time; thus the loss or wasting of time which should be devoted to active practice has a direct impact on our mental continuum beyond death.

Because the Sethian left-hand approach to initiation is comprised of realizing liberation within one temporal life span (Kali, among other things, represents the ordering of time and counting), our approach to our work is a more rapid, quick-burning, and potentially dangerous one than practices of the right-hand approach which are generally prolonged, conservatively measured, and intellectually based, spanning many incarnations. For well over two thousand years, left-hand path religious practices have been considered a path for the few, not the many. This fact shouldn’t be viewed as being either positive or negative. Nor is it intended to imply any superiority associated with the exclusivity in numbers. The exclusive nature of the left-hand path is due in part to the fact that every facet of the left-hand path initiate’s physical, mental and spiritual being is constantly challenged, making it a practice too taxing and perilous compared to more conventional systems of initiation. There are still other factors which contribute to this path being thinly treaded upon. For example, if the initiatory practices of the original left-hand path religion are properly executed, a fair degree of stigmatization will be experienced by the initiate, permanently scarring him or her with an irrevocable presence of the chaotic god with which the initiate is aligned. This stigmatization factor alone requires the initiate to be of a unique constitution capable of withstanding all of the unpredictable ramifications such an effect may cause. Also, the left-hand path as practiced in its original Eastern form is a very difficult initiatory system to penetrate since securing an authentic teacher requires considerable searching and the passing of immensely difficult trials before the potential initiate is deemed strong enough to endure the rigors of long-term initiation.

In short, these and other factors guarantee that not many people will automatically gravitate to this type of initiation. In order to meet the requirements of left-hand path initiation, a stronger commitment and willingness to take risk is required of the sinister initiate than that of other more stable, tranquil, and reasonable approaches to enlightenment. This doesn’t mean the Sethian left-hand path initiate is foolhardy, irrational, or arbitrarily impulsive. It means that when we are presented with challenges, we will take a pro-active rather than passive position; we act rather than react; we are on the offense rather than the defense. Since we primarily focus our vital work within the realities of our present lifetime, we tend to have a lower threshold for indulging a lack of discipline.

One example of a uniquely Sethian approach towards initiation is for the initiate to regard his or her own life with the same urgency and need experienced in a war zone in which every move and action must be weighed yet determined swiftly, as necessity dictates. During battle, situations such as missed opportunity, lingering sentimentality, second or third chances, or excessive contemplation would be fatal; and so it is on the sinister path. Does this indicate that the warrior has no compassion at all? Of course not, he simply learns how to maximize efficient use of mortal time which is palpably fleeting under the conditions of war.

On September 9 of this year I celebrated my first anniversary as Hemet-neter tepi Seth, more commonly known in English as ”High Priestess of Seth”. Thank you to those who sent your tidings on that day; your sentiments were taken to heart and it has indeed been an honor to have gained your appreciation for my work in His service thus far.

Although I do not celebrate my mortal natal anniversary (by choice), I do celebrate dates which have made a mark on my spiritual growth, and September 9th is one of those days, as will be the upcoming first anniversary of the Storm [SLM] breaking free, November 8, 2003 e.v. While contemplating all that has transpired over the past year, I came to the decision that it was time to share something with my fellow Sethians in order to permanently place something in context for posterity which relates to my appointment as Seth’s Preeminent Servant.

Self proclamation of authoritative titles is a common phenomenon among religious and/or occult sect leaders. A cursory survey of this primarily 20th century phenomenon will instantly reveal a multitude of self-declared Masters, High Priests, gurus, Ipsissimi, Bhaghwani, etc.. I am pleased that I cannot count myself among such types. Legitimate religious teachers and scholars know that a genuine spiritual leader is one whose calling to lead is first noticed by those outside of him or herself based on certain qualities, abilities, and actions and then must subsequently be accepted by the individual in question as his or her destiny. This contrasts with those whose will to lead is born simply out of the mundane wish to be a leader. In such cases the goal being to reap the rewards a title brings without the hard work and the innate, manifest qualities which validate the position; in short what might be considered a ”false prophet”. There are long traditions utilizing a process of identifying certain qualities to recognize a religious leader in the making, unbeknown (often due to the early age such qualities are detected) to him or herself.

Two examples of spiritual teachers whose fate were predestined, and whose appointment to their respective roles were not self-motivated, who come to mind are the Dalai Lamas and Krishnamurti. These religious leaders were chosen; they didn’t ”apply for the job” nor did they proclaim themselves as world religious teachers. Of the two aforementioned types of religious or occult leaders, the self-proclaimed versus the chosen, I obviously feel the most affinity for the spiritual guides who were selected. In both cases of my appointment to the position of High Priestess (1985 and again in 2002), I too never ”applied for the job” but was chosen, or more specifically I was appointed to be High Priestess by the previous High Priest in each respective situation and was regarded as such among my peers as well as among the secular world.

Similarly, because I have neither relinquished nor passed on my sacred office, I contend that any other current claimants to the role of High Priest or High Priestess of Seth are impostors. However, beyond the subject of appointment to a sacred duty, ultimately it is the Work accomplished and Knowledge conveyed which ratifies the authenticity of any spiritual office. Therefore, for historical purposes and for the sake of this Sethian religious movement that I have been entrusted to guide, I am revealing one year later the spell which sealed my fate as Seth’s Preeminent Servant. The following are the two transmissions which inaugurated and confirmed my appointment to this office, printed in the order which I read them (although they were received in the opposite order).

I just sent you a letter that I wrote in a deep trance to pass on the High Priesthood to you. Its subject is ”With These Words” Read when you choose, or when you feel as Compelled as I did to write it this morning of 9/9/XXXVII [2002].

The magical part is done on my end, and I Wish you well on your journey. A lot of corny lines like ”Stop and smell the roses” come to mind. They’re all actually good advice, but your own keys to Happiness will jingle in your pocket and remind you from time to time.

The Link is now Opened for you. It will be yours everyday and everynight. It will give you energy and advice, ecstasy and pain, wisdom and foolishness. You will See things that no one else can see, and the opportunity to perform deeds of glory in your name and in the Name of Set.

The ages have held many streams of Becoming. The First Beast called them together magically when Set’s opposite Face spoke and gave him Will. The Second Beats [sic] added self to the equation. 93 + 25 = 118. What had existed in Secret now blazed forth in glory to take the whole of the Earth and prepare mankind for the stars. Those streams of Becoming find you now. They wash over you. And you will suffer a sea of change into something rich and strange. Each atom of your body, each beat of Heart, each thought of your Mind, each spell of your soul is changing now.

If your Will is strong you will be You. In exchange you must now know the terrors of Love, the ecstasies of Fear, the freedom of hard Work and the occasional burden of Wonder. The Children of Set look upon you. Their simple gaze changes you as well, and your Gaze on them drives them to excellence and failure and helps shape this brew, that someday we will pour upon the world, unleashing streams that will re-shape all lands.

I have the honor to salute you first as High Priest. Soon you will stand before them and greet them for our [Helsinki] Conclave, and they will see it. Those who hate you and those who love you and those that think nothing will be different will see it. And you seeing it in their eyes will see it, and then slowly your other Eyes will see it reflected in His Eyes.

High Priestess, I give you four Wishes from my Heart.

Life, Strength, Health and Happiness.

May you find and enjoy those four things and Teach them to the Children of Set.

Through many years of theurgic magic and other consciousness-refining activities, the Sethian establishes a bond with Seth that eventually allows for a complete mystical alliance with the divine. When many Sethian initiates simultaneously pursue that same process of spiritual affinity with the same intensity, the network referred to above organically begins to take form.

Seth is the Smai, the Fiend; His associates were called Smaiu, the Fiends. These Fiends were traditionally described as being seventy-two in number, although the precise numerological significance of this number remains obscure. The Seventy-Two Fiends of Seth are described in the ancient papyri and coffin texts of Khem as the Confederates of Seth (thus our early designation as a Confederacy, a reference to the eternal war between Sutekh and His opponents).

The Companions of Seth are also referred to as Seth’s Co-Conspirators. Conspiracy, meaning in Latin, ”to breathe together”. In our initiatory practices we utilize many synchronized breathing techniques for a variety of purposes. To provide some examples, we conspire with our animal totems (when we can be near enough to observe their breathing); we practice specific breathing techniques with fellow initiates; we synchronize our breathing during magico-erotic union with our sex partners; when practicing any sort of sympathetic magic, breathing in tandem with the recipient of our sorcery is a given. But how close must you be to a god to breathe together with Him? How intimately must we know our own god to actively conspire with His plans for disruption and subversion? Such a relationship is not the submission of a penitent praying on his or her knees to a distant god, but the confidential union of spiritual partners in crime. The closer your bond becomes with our Patron, the stronger you will feel the rhythm of His breath in yours.

There are many mentions of the Fiends in Sethian lore, but two of the best-known will suffice. It was the Seventy-Two Fiends who helped Seth construct the coffin into which Osiris was tricked, and it was these same Co-Conspirators who were His shape-shifting army in the battle against Horus. The same concept of an uncanny army of supernatural creatures can be seen in the Nordic description of the helpers of Loki who assist Him in His war against the Aesir. Both the armies of Seth and the armies of Loki are but regional descriptions of timeless transcultural spiritual phenomena that exist as a brigade of spiritual allies. The Companions of Seth on earth who form the Storm’s core of initiates can be understood as the human reflections of that eternal phenomenon.

So, when we say that the Storm is the physical embodiment of the Seventy-Two Fiends of Seth, the Army of Red Ones, this should not be understood as a bit of poetic whimsy or theatrical flourish. The world is already filled with enough slick rhetoric and jargon. When I hail you as a Companion in Seth’s Army, I mean it as a fact of our embraced spiritual stigma -- not as an empty phrase. As Seth’s Preeminent Servant at this time, it would be blasphemy on my part were I to address you as a Companion of Seth without literally meaning it. However, each initiate who has crossed the threshold into the second Working year of the Storm now has the fierce task of maintaining and enhancing that most disreputable of honors; to live even more than before as a true Companion of Seth, and understanding what that sacred stigma really means.

This crossing of the threshold, if fully comprehended, could not possibly be taken lightly. The battle between Horus and Seth alone lasted eighty years. You have now completed one year as a Child of Revolt; are you ready for the next 79 years? We who are pierced by the two sacred arrows of Ombos now rise from the rubble and prepare for attack in the year to come; active engagement in Battle is what will fortify the Backbone of His movement and of His Fiends.

As a Companion of Seth, it is our duty each day to remind ourselves of what it really means to be a Confederate, a Co-Conspirator, a Companion of our Patron. Not merely to think about this intellectually, but to know with all your senses the state of companionship to this neter. Take some private time each day to breathe together with this entity. As you walk a familiar course, synchronize your movements with His. Experience His molten lava in your bones. Before drinking a toast to his Intoxication, taste His iron in your own saliva (”Ised”). See through the red lens of His eyes which reveals, like an infrared lens, that which cannot be seen to the naked human eye in the darkness. Act with the sudden swiftness of a striking serpent which knows no hesitation or procrastination. Take the offense rather than defense each day, before someone (or something) more Sethian than yourself knocks you on your ass. Recognize the burning odor of His revivifying destruction. Feel His thundering Roar charge forth from within you. Be energized with His volcanic Force. Murder a new delusion each night. Discover in your own soul the radiance of His blinding gold.

All religions are based on a bond with their god, but the bond with Seth that you have accepted by being an accomplice in His movement is a very specific one. How exactly one undertakes this agitating daily devotional practice will vary according to the disposition and experience of each initiate. However, incorporating an act of Sethian gnosis each day will avail you of a deeper understanding of our Patron far more than the mere reading of words ever possibly could.

The relevance of this practice to the Sethian is that it strengthens lucidity in all states of consciousness, permitting initiation to continue even in one’s sleep. Many years of sustaining this intense 24-hour awareness is an act of Sethian self-gnosis, since it allows the dream-sorcerer to attain one of the key attributes of Seth, that eternal wakefulness that caused the Egyptians to refer to Him as Nehes (Wakeful One). The initiate who can master the skill of lucid dreaming has also taken another step towards mutating into a Seth-like being in that he or she has become a sovereign in one of those unknown borderland areas of consciousness ruled by Seth. As a lucid dreamer, you can more effectively experiment with the Sethian emanation of sending nightmares to others as a compassionate means of harsh awakening; a jarring out of the normative auto-pilot waking state. Or conversely, one may experience more vividly the lessons and messages provided in those nightmares that are sent to us from Seth. The lucid dream, located as it is at a crossroads between worlds and states of consciousness, places the magician in an unique position to influence the delicate balance of consciousness and the interplay it has on matter in the waking state, and is thus an opportunity to test one’s ability in the art of adjusting the mutable fabric of Maya.

The Sethian dreamer will learn that all levels of reality appear to be more pliable in dreams, a nocturnal education that reveals to us the less obvious fluidity of the waking state as well. In the lucid dream, it is as if one has secured entry to the backstage area of life’s theater, allowing the dreamer an advantage in manipulating phenomena inside and outside of his or her own mind. The hermetic axiom ”as above, so below” is illustrated through lucid dream magic in one of its most dramatic forms.

Such sorcery alone is only one part of Sethian gnosis. Some readers of this article may hold the erroneous idea that Sethianism and the left-hand path are primarily concerned with the ego-driven seizing of control of all aspects of reality, an idea which is utterly unattainable and essentially stems from neurotic insecurity and fear.

Therefore, I must add an important clarification. Lucid dreaming does not necessarily seek to control so much as to observe previously hidden aspects of the dream world with a heightened awareness. It should also be pointed out that the dreamworld offers the egolessness necessary for dramatic breakthroughs and personal revelations in one's practice often blocked in the waking state.

As in meditation, the goal is active observation rather than passive observation: energized receptivity. The control in lucid dreaming is based in the self-control and internal discipline that allows the initiate to experience the dream state more wakefully, rather than being a completely helpless bystander or passive spectator to the contents of the unconscious.

However, the measure of control achieved in lucid dreaming will not, and cannot, alter Seth’s divine manifestation in the dream state which is characterized by the unpredictable, the chaotic and the random.

The magician that rigidly strives for control rather than insight can easily miss one of the most important aspects of Sethian dream work: the opportunity to encounter and communicate with the external and transhuman intelligence of our god in His own kingdom of dreams, known as Seth-Amenteth. When your dreams consistently foresee and even shape actual events in your waking state, this aspect of Sethian dreamwork will open your horizons to the flexible nature of reality considerably, an important stepping stone on the path to liberation. For the Sethian, the lucid dreamer’s ability to maintain conscious awareness in the netherworld of dreams is a nightly rehearsal for the Sethian aberration of immortality. Lucid dreaming is psychic training to prepare the daimon for retaining full wakefulness during and beyond the body’s ultimate sleep of death. It is one of the bodily techniques that lead to acquiring the deathless wakefulness of the Eternal Seth.

The exercises I will present in this project are designed to create building blocks which should ultimately form a complete structure for ongoing, multifaceted Sethian dreamwork.

As this will be the formal inauguration of the Seth-Amenteth project, it is important that the purpose of the first exercise is to exclusively focus on making ourselves accessible to encounters and communication with our Patron. Synchronizing ourselves with Seth will obviously be an ongoing theme throughout the entire project as we experiment with various techniques, setting our sights on particular individual and group goals. However, in the first week we will clear the conduit between our own personal dreamscapes and the nocturnal force of Seth-Typhon, an activity which will instantly distinguish this dream project from profane dreamwork.

Initiates participating in this project all have varying degrees of experience with both dreamwork and/or encounters with Seth in the dream realm. Some of you have already had successes in previous experiments, others may have had failed attempts, and still others might have experienced isolated, spontaneous occurrences which you have not been able to expand upon. But regardless of how experienced (or inexperienced) you are in other dream techniques, the main purpose of this project is to provide you with enduring focus, structure, and methods specific to Sethian dreamwork, which can be perfected through practice over many years.

One note of clarification: It is doubtful that Seth will always (or ever) appear in your dreams as the neat, tidy instantly recognizable form we know from Egyptian artwork. Remember that those representations are merely symbols for a shapeshifting essence that the psyche may manifest to us in completely unpredictable forms. Consider the many different ways in which the multifaceted presence of Seth may appear in your dreams and nightmares. Therefore it will help you determine if a dream or nightmare might have the presence of this particular deity if you are well versed in His attributes, characteristics, and functions which are rooted in the deepest primordial structures of the psyche. You should also make note of the emotional sensation during dreams as often His presence doesn’t always manifest in an image or plot within the dream but can also manifest in a feeling while all other imagery might seem irrelevant. Another form Seth may take in your dreams could be that one or several of his attributes (immense strength, causing of strife, sexual abandon, etc.) may be embodied within your dream self.

The hours in which Seth presides over dreams and nightmares are between 2- 4:00 in the morning. The hour described in the coffin texts as representing Seth is 5:00 A.M. (or one hour before dawn) when the Boat of the Millions of Years is in the darkest hour before emerging into daybreak. The time frame between 2-5 in the morning also coincides with the highest biological levels of nightmare activity or anxiety dreams and feelings of fear, dread, and foreboding in the waking state. Therefore it is this time of night which we will target for our beginning work.

From the Sethian point of view, each night when we enter the world of sleep we are embarking on a perilous voyage through the underworld, the realm of death where Apep awaits. Our souls are taking a nightly journey that mirrors the voyage of the Boat of Millions of Years guarded by Seth as it sails through the nether regions.

Because Seth is the only one of the Neteru who cannot die, and who remains awake and potent in the netherworld, He has the task of stealing and consuming the souls of the corrupt from their dead bodies, punishing the tainted soul so that it may not achieve eternal life. To ensure the soul’s safe passage through the dangerous domain ruled by Seth, it was necessary for the dead soul to utter the theurgic statement, “I am Sutekh!” (from the papyrus Harris), thus becoming Seth and eluding His wrath. Similarly, to survive the night journey through the underworld, the dead/dreaming soul was also expected to declare, “I am Baba! (the permanently erect phallus associated with Seth) I am Seth!”. It was believed that the soul must retain the strong sexual desire possessed by Seth to exert the vitality necessary for eternal life. (This is tied into the endurance of the Khaibit, or shadow, after death, the Khaibit being the spiritual source of sexuality according to Egyptian soulcraft.)

For the first part of this project it is important to follow the daily specifications and not deviate, substitute, or ignore any of the details as they are expressly designed for optimum results in creating your cornerstone to build upon for your Set-Amentet foundation, and to create a unified group egregore for those of us engaged in this journey.

Each of the exercises presented in this project are for the purpose of priming ourselves for Sethian action in the dream states. To “prime” is to prepare for action. One cannot fire a gun, no matter how strong your convictions, without the necessary priming of loading the gun. Because dreams are not predictable or able to be chosen at will (like turning on the T.V. to choose a particular show), it is important to understand that the desired effect of each of the Sethian dream/nightmare inducements may, or may not occur, immediately after the priming exercise. However, with each exercise introduced to you during this project you will be opening channels within your mind and body in order to be accessible and ready for encounters with our Patron and experiences of a distinctly Sethian nature.

As a Sethian initiate, your waking state should have no contradictions to your sleeping state. In other words, you are a Sethian initiate throughout the entire day and night, and should not approach sleep as an escape from your everyday life or initiatic practices (as many people do, whether or not they care about their dreams). You are forming a seamless river flowing through all your initiatic undertakings. Whether we are meditating in full waking consciousness, inducing trance states for oracular purposes, crossing previously forbidden or unexplored borders in our everyday lives, ingesting plant substances to further open gateways into the spiritual domain, extending sexual arousal to achieve altered states of consciousness, or navigating our own ships through the netherworld of our dreams and nightmares, the aim always remains the same: to create a continuous flow of initiatory activity which will build the necessary momentum for ultimate liberation.

After many years of diligent, regular practice these techniques and activities will become as automatic a reflex to you as breathing and eating. Just as one simply couldn’t isolate a special time of day to breathe, or only eat on the weekends and holidays, so you will find that for the serious initiate, every moment of the day becomes saturated with purpose and actions which propel you further toward your goal.

Although we’ve often stated this fact in different ways within the SLM, it is important to underscore it once again when introducing initiatory work in the dream and nightmare complex since we receive a tremendous amount of conditioning from the mundane mass mind which sends us the message to merely vegetate with sleep and be “entertained” by our dreams. As spiritual terrorists we must relentlessly wage war against our own societal programming in this regard. One who truly lives as Seth, crossing the boundaries of and into all foreign worlds, is utterly beyond mortal comprehension and is therefore prone to be the target of attempts at psychic shackling. While actively working toward a heightened vigilance during our sleep, we will undertake certain specific Seth-like activities in our waking hours in order to induce profound de-conditioning, transformative, and revelatory experiences about ourselves while dreaming. Therefore, each week for the next five to six weeks, I will target a different characteristic of Seth which we will focus on embodying in our waking states in order to elicit His presence and His lessons to us while dreaming.

These specific exercises are designed to be undertaken on weekends or days when you don’t need to be awake early in the morning for work, since much of what you will do to prime yourself for these dream/nightmare experiences will most likely happen to disrupt the normal flow of sleep patterns. However, it should be pointed out that merely by being aware of what each new exercise will be, and putting the thought into the necessary preparatory arrangements, you in essence have already begun the exercise even before the designated day. So don’t be surprised if you begin having some effect even before you enact the specific exercise on your chosen day.

Co-authored by Zeena and Nikolas Schreck, this publication is the only authorized form of the privately published fact sheet written for distribution to journalists who contacted the Schrecks for comment after LaVey's death. It was later placed without permission on the Internet.

Web master's note: It should go without saying that Zeena has disowned this introduction for over two decades, which she wrote prior to her resignation from the Church of Satan and her denunciation of the book. The introduction has since been removed from later editions,much to Zeena's satisfaction.

*Richard Ramirez's Final Statement to the Court Before Sentencing(co-authored by Richard Ramirez, Zeena, Nikolas Schreck)

During the last two years of Zeena's time as High Priestess of the Church of Satan, Zeena fulfilled some of her pastoral work by serving as spiritual adviser to prisoners such as Richard Ramirez. At Ramirez's request, she visited him in jail, communicated with him by telephone and post, and attended his trial. He also invited Zeena and her consort Nikolas Schreck to contribute to his final statement to the court.

Predictably, the mainstream media wrongly interpreted this as support for Ramirez's crimes, rather than Zeena's religious duty to a human being in need of spiritual counsel at a crucial time, which it in fact was. Ramirez later alerted the Schrecks to the illegal activities of right-wing Christian law enforcement zealots who sought to persecute them for their religious beliefs. Zeena continues to provide spiritual counsel to prisoners in her capacity as a Tantric Buddhist and as High Priestess of Seth (Hemet Neter Tepi Seth).

An excerpt from the original Black House Sourcebook. The Black House resource center was an independent sole proprietorship founded by Zeena prior to her leaving the Church of Satan. It was also a source of tension among the latter-day Church of Satan after Diane LaVey selected her administrative successor Blanche Barton to replace her in the job. Barton sought control over all aspects of their new "Central Grotto" while attempting to drive a wedge between LaVey and those closest to LaVey, including his daughters Karla and Zeena. Zeena closed the Black House upon abdicating from her position as High Priestess of that organization.

This text provides an interesting historical insight into Zeena's disapproval of her father's abandonment of the Church of Satan's original classical and formal aesthetic to appeal to a trendy Industrial/Black Metal youth subculture demographic that once would have been anathema to the elitist standards of the early Church of Satan into which Zeena was born.

”[The sinister current is] a universal biological phenomenon seemingly hardwired into human consciousness and sexuality ... The Indian Tantric phrase describes this psychosexual anomaly with great precision. However, we also use the phrase ”sinister current”, which indicates its non-indigenous, omnipresent existence, not only in a specific cultural tradition, but as a force located in the body itself.”

Demons of the Flesh

It is taught that the left-hand path is the only suitable method of initiation for the Kali Yuga.

However, as is typical of the Kali Yuga, countless subjective misunderstandings and misconceptions have been spread by the ignorant concerning the nature of the left-hand path in the past century. This confused situation creates many obstacles and dead ends for the 21st century seeker of sinister liberation. These false ideas of the left-hand path have been disseminated like cancerous memes by the uneducated blind leading the blind who masquerade as left-hand authorities without even a scintilla of accurate knowledge concerning this subject. Ignorance is excusable when reliable knowledge is lacking, but stubborn insistence on clinging to ignorance in the face of overwhelming evidence is sheer stupidity. With apologies to the Firesign Theater, this essay covers some of the most frequently asked questions of those new to the left-hand path. This essay, in conjunction with Demons of the Flesh, seeks to dispel these delusions as an act of liberation from ignorance.

We live in a time when such profoundly transformative tools of liberation as meditation and yoga have been reduced from their previously sacred status by populist materialists and merchants to empty relaxation exercises, simple physical fitness courses lacking any spiritual substance. Enlightenment has become a meaningless buzzword bandied about by New Age enthusiasts and armchair occultists, most of whom have never undertaken the rigors of a genuine spiritual discipline, but prefer to read second-hand accounts of spiritual advances made by others. Exoteric world religions have become little more than dogmatic and conservative secular political forces, obstacles to the original radical and liberatory goals that inspired their founders. Most contemporary ”magical” groups and ”esoteric orders” foster sleep rather than awakening. Western occultism largely perpetuates the fantasies and self-delusions of its adherents by flattering their egos and providing a false sense of socially dependent identity and wishful thinking that never touches the deeper levels of the mind.

Despite the flood of supposedly ”occult” information available in the noisy 21st century media landscape, the vast majority of this information and the activity it generates only leads to further immersion in self-absorbed ego games and fantasy. Not only is solid grounding in the actual methods that lead to awakening, enlightenment and liberation lacking today, only a precious few possess the will, sense of urgency and diligence of practice to apply themselves to these methods.

For those who understand the nature of the spiritual crisis facing mankind in this Kali Yuga, such degeneration of the authentic should be expected. Planetary consciousness is consumed ever deeper into ignorance, sleep and breakdown. In keeping with the dissolving nature of the age, so too do spiritual traditions become corrupt and hollow. It is not surprising that the ancient left-hand path tradition has also suffered a similar ”dumbing down” process.

We have found that many initiates who believe they are drawn to the left-hand path are actually better suited to the right-hand path, and vice-versa. But any understanding of which path one is on is premature without an accurate understanding of the actual meanings of the paths. Attempting to determine one’s spiritual leanings through the distorted prism of popular occultism will only lead one to waste one’s time and energy pursuing false leads. Making mistakes along the way and undergoing educational disillusionment is a necessary purification of any initiatory journey. But this life is too short, and the time available for liberatory practice is far too limitedm, to indulge obvious and easily disprovable error.

The current deficit of accurate knowledge concerning the left-hand path has been aggravated by the fallacious idea that the left-hand path is ”whatever you want it to be”, a kind of postmodern ”do-it-yourself” spiritual anarchy based simply on personal opinion. This mistaken concept can only be adopted by those who are ignorant of the many thousands of years old integral sinister tradition and the very specific practices that define the true left-hand path. We have observed that those who find it impossible to accept that an objective spiritual reality far greater than their own individual prejudices exists on its own terms are usually too immersed in the ego to realize liberation.

It is therefore necessary that students interested in undertaking our Liberation in This Lifetime course accurately understand what is meant by the phrases ”sinister current” and ”left-hand path” before deciding to proceed. Although Demons of the Flesh was written in part as a corrective antidote to false ideas of the left-hand path, many of our readers write to us seeking clarification of a few points that remain obscure.

Several of our Liberation in This Lifetime students and other colleagues have been helpful to us in pinpointing some of the most frequent areas of misunderstanding, for which we are grateful. Further explanation will be provided in forthcoming sequels to Demons of the Flesh, and we are appreciative of any of our reader’s comments which help us to determine further areas requiring elucidation.

The Sinister Current: An Universal Ur-Religion

It is a common error among those whose understanding of the left-hand path is limited to unreliable popular occult sources to presume that the left-hand path constitutes some sort of atheistic or agnostic anti-religion. This is not true.

On the contrary, the archaic feminine sinister current appears to have been the Ur-religion of humanity, perhaps the original impetus of all spiritual development. The sinister current is a specific universal spiritual and physiological phenomenon manifesting in almost all human cultures and religious traditions. An informed study of comparative religion and world mythology reveals that the sinister current can be discovered as a powerful subterranean stream flowing through most spiritual systems of initiation, sometimes in a subtle and hidden form, sometimes quite blatantly.

Therefore the Liberation in This Lifetime course does not restrict itself to only one cultural expression of the sinister current, but draws useful techniques and practices from a wide spectrum of spiritual technologies.

Before the advent of the body- and sex-negative patriarchal mainstream faiths secured their power base, the sinister tradition of self-transformation left its traces in many divergent religions. Hinduism, Buddhism, early Christianity, Libertine Gnosticism, Shamanism, Esoteric Islam, Sufism, Taoism, Voodoo and the Kabbalah each have their feminine, sinister and transgressive sides. Ancient pagan practices such as Northern Seidhr and the Greek cult of Dionysus are only some of the many obvious European manifestations of the sinister current. The Mesopotamian worship of Ishtar and her cult of the sacred prostitute, better known today as the Whore of Babylon, is directly analogous to the left-hand path. The enduring worship of the archaic god Seth, He Who Stands on the Left of the Pharaoh, the lustful and warlike transgressive son of Nut, sky goddess of a much earlier feminine stellar cult, was a survival of sinister spirituality even in the conservative, patrilineal ancient Egyptian religion.

What remnants of the sinister current the patriarchal religions did not destroy was decimated by the new secular religion of the 19th and 20th centuries; the cult of rationality and atheistic scientism. Even by the 18th century, the prevalence of male-dominated logocentric philosophies of ”reason” typified by Plato and the soulless dogmatic rationality of the so-called Age of Enlightenment (what a misnomer!) largely succeeded in wiping out the last traces of a sinister current in the West.

The sinister current which is now reasserting itself, then, is not a new-fangled reaction to religion. She is the archaic source of religion, the underlying atavistic common foundation of all mystical experience that unites flesh and spirit, and all seeming opposites as One.

The Sinister Current: Not Only Eastern Tantra

Due to the aggressive campaign of destruction waged against the feminine and transgressive sinister current by the politically powerful patriarchal religions, one of the very few remaining continuous sinister current traditions is Vama Marga or Vamachara, literally the ”left way” of Indian Tantrism.

Naturally, the Tantric Vama Marga tradition offers a precious legacy of wisdom and experience from which the Liberation in This Lifetime course draws much nourishment and many practical techniques. The left-hand path of Buddhism, most significantly represented by Vajrayana Tantrism of Tibet, is also a source of useful practical methodology. However, the universal sinister current as transmitted to students of the Liberation in ThisLifetime course is by no means restricted to the Tantric left-hand path, but is a much broader phenomenon.

Traditional Tantra is certainly a viable path for many initiates, but the Liberation in This Lifetime course distills the essence of the sinister current in a form relevant to 21st Century Western initiates rather than becoming immersed in a fetishistic recreation of medieval Indian or Tibetan practices. We have found through experience that an overemphasis on regional details rather than universal foundations can be a limiting approach which misses the main point of this method of initiation entirely.

Too often we have seen such a uni-cultural approach obscure a clear view of the forest due to the exotic trees, frequently distracting students from the goals of initiation with an abundance of extraneous ceremonial and regional practices relevant to the Eastern initiate but of little practical value to the Western initiate. To mention only the most obvious example, many of the Eastern left-hand path transgressive practices are only meaningful in the context of the rigid Indian caste system and the strict Hindu religious dietary, sexual and behavioral taboos. For Westerners to dutifully follow practices that only have significance in a specific culture is literally absurd and will not hasten liberation. This is why the Liberation in This Lifetime course adapts the fundamentals of sinister current techniques to suit the unique conditions of each individual student and the environments they live in, which are much more heterogeneous in the contemporary West than the circumstances in many traditional Asian cultures.

Nor is this course a gentle whitewashed Westernized version of traditional Tantra as is encountered in many popularized New Age derivations of Eastern mysticism prevalent today

The Liberation in This Lifetime course takes a stark, streamlined and universal approach to sinister liberation, dispensing with as much superfluous cultural baggage as possible to reveal the timeless core of the practice.

The Sinister Current: Not Satanism or Black Magic

Another common misunderstanding: The phrase ”left-hand path” has been thoughtlessly hijacked by the shallow recreational consumers of the ”Satanic subculture” to describe their self-indulgent, ego-driven, and spiritually meaningless posturing. Modern Satanism’s vulgar ”Looking Out For Number One” Social Darwinism, materialism, and bitter ”sour-grapes” misanthropy is antithetical to the joyful nature of the sinister current. Although it may take several billion more life-times for the so-called black magician to realize what would be apparent to any literate person who has ever made a serious study of the authentic left-hand path, the U.S.A.-spawned sub-culture known as ”Satanism” has nothing to do with the true left-hand path tradition. Indeed, ”Satanism” in its lowest common denominator manifestation should more accurately be called Narcissism.

The worship of the feminine principle, the anti-materialistic and transcendental nature of the practice, nondualism, the practice of meditation, physical, mental, and spiritual fitness, the development of compassion and transpersonal love that comes with enlightenment, communication with divine forces, the radical measures taken to eradicate the individual ego so that one’s innate union with the divine may be realized – all of these basic left-hand practices are completely foreign to modern Satanism, with its All-American indulgence of self-obsessed individualism and solipsism.

It could be argued that the deliberate pose of social iconoclasm championed by some Satanists is vaguely related to the authentic left-hand practice of cultivating deliberate ostracization and outcast status. However, the motivating reason for this practice is completely different for the authentic left-hand path initiate, a subtlety lost on the stunted adolescent mentality usually attracted to ready-made Satanic symbolism as an easy means of gaining negative attention.

Sinister current initiates take on what the Sufi tradition refers to as Malamat or ”blameworthy” transgressive behavior to completely liberate themselves from egoic entanglements and as a means of spiritual enlightenment. The popular modern Satanist adopts a few safe and shop-worn clichés of consensus reality ”evil” for no deeper reason than the transient thrill of reactionary naughtiness or simply to mark themselves to their peers as members of a particular clique, not unlike urban gangs wearing their ”colors” to denote their tribal affiliations. The gulf between the two approaches, although they may seem outwardly similar to the uninitiated, is unbridgeable.

That being said, it is important to understand that the driving impetus of the sinister current is the liberation of all consciousness in all sentient beings. Left-hand path initiation begins when we recognize that the world of appearances, and our ideas of ourselves - these phantoms that we have rigidly accepted as reality - are only flimsy mirages or mere fragments from half-forgotten dreams. This shock can sometimes provide the self-insight needed to transcend the false conditioning and delusive ideology that all human beings accept out of simple ignorance of the facts. Therefore, even those who ascribe to the self-absorbed and egotistical principles of modern Satanism and other forms of popular occult entertainment can theoretically be liberated by adopting a genuine left-hand path initiatory practice. The ability to ruthlessly abandon the long-held delusions that we cling to out of comfort or familiarity is a litmus test of sinister initiation.

Left and Right from a Non-Dualist Perspective

If such misunderstandings as we have described above prevail regarding the true meaning of the left-hand path, it is no wonder that an equal amount of confusion has obscured the meaning of the right-hand path. Disentangling this confusion is necessary to a full understanding of the sinister current.

Many beginning students of the Liberation in This Lifetime course have come to us with the inaccurate assumption that practitioners of the right-hand path are the opposite or adversaries of the left-hand path, and are therefore to be scorned or belittled as ”sheep”.

This is not a valid perspective, and it is not supported by the facts. Occult know-nothings of many different leanings have adopted the simplistic idea that ”right-hand path” means ”good/benevolent/white magic”, and that ”left-hand path” means ”evil/malevolent/black magic”. Others have erroneously described such religious traditions as Christianity, Judaism and Islam as right hand path, which is simply not true. Wiccans, modern pagans and Thelemites often erroneously label themselves ”right-hand path” even though their sex-oriented practices actually place them somewhat closer to the true left-hand path tradition.

In a nutshell:

Right-hand path initiates practice the Tantric methods of self-transformation leading to enlightenment and liberation without a sexual consort and without using the technique of social transgression. Right-hand path initiates are said to be on the right (Sanskrit Dakshina) because their disposition and karma draws them to the renunciate, ascetic disembodied male path of Shiva, the passive masculine energy flowing through the pingala current located on the right side of the subtle body. The ultimate goal of the right-hand path is also liberation, but initiates of the right usually believe that their liberation will only occur after many lifetimes due to the cautious, methodical, relatively slow-acting methods used.

Left-hand path initiates practice the Tantric methods of self-transformation leading to enlightenment and liberation with a sexual consort, including the technique of social transgression. Left-hand path initiates are said to be on the left (Sanksrit Vama) because their disposition and karma draws them to the all-inclusive, world-embracing physical female path of Shakti, the active feminine energy flowing through the ida current located in the left side of the subtle body. The ultimate goal of the left-hand path is liberation, which initiates of the left usually believe can be accomplished in this lifetime due to the radical, relatively quick-acting methods utilized.

The inaccurate and out-dated writings of Madame Blavatsky and Aleister Crowley have caused much harm, promoting the equally false concept that ”good” right-hand path adepts surrender their egos while ”evil” left-hand path adepts selfishly cling to their egos. It is this foolish Blavatsky/Crowley error that influenced modern Satanists to justify their own reactionary and misguided identification of the left-hand path with deliberate selfishness and self-aggrandizing exaltation of the ego/persona.

As any familiarity with the authentic Tantric teachings of both paths makes blindingly obvious, both the left-hand path and right-hand path attempt to transcend the ego in their quest for enlightenment and liberation. Only the techniques the two paths use to reach this goal vary; the goal of the left-hand path and right-hand path is identical. The Tantras compare the gentle method of the right-hand path to milk, likening the left-hand path to the intoxicating effects of wine. The method one chooses is a matter of temperament, character and the mysterious factor of previous karmic conditioning.

Both right and left systems seek to create awakening. The right-hand path takes a long, careful time in the process of gently and gradually waking its adherents, making sure not to frighten or disturb its initiates. This is the best way for most initiates, although it is arguable if such methods can be truly effective in the Kali Yuga. The sinister way, in keeping with the apocalyptic nature of this era, aims to awaken us immediately with the psychic equivalent of an alarm clock or a pail of cold water thrown on our heads, which is obviously a more dangerous and disturbing practice.

Mature and aware initiates of the left-hand path respect sincere practitioners of any authentic spiritual path, although the transgressive and outcast nature of the left-hand path realistically understands that the more close-minded and prejudiced adherents of socially conventional traditions may not at all be reciprocal with tolerance for them. But when we realize the nondual and enlightened state of mind that transcends the limited perspective of the ego, it becomes obvious that even those who choose to be one’s enemies are also in need of liberation. For this reason, we advise that left-hand path initiates should not skulk around in secret societies patting themselves on the back for their great wisdom, but should fearlessly engage in open and honest dialogue with genuine practitioners of other traditions.

Since both paths embrace nondualism and transconceptual thought, the concepts of good and evil are foreign to both of them. Which means that neither the left-hand path nor the right-hand path can be designated as good nor evil, right nor wrong, better nor worse, superior nor inferior. Most scholars of Tantricism now believe that the feminine, sex-positive left-hand path method was the original form, and that the masculine, sex-negative right-hand path method was a much later derivation. If there is a struggle between the left-hand and right-hand path powers it is mostly located in our bodies and psyches as the liberating kinetic power of Shakti asserts herself over the passive masculine energy. As it is written in the Kubjika Tantra, ”Vama [the incarnation of the feminine left current] is the granter of great liberation after conquering Dakshina [the incarnation of the masculine right current]”.

Traditionally, all initiates of the left-hand path begin by mastering the contemplative, meditative and yogic techniques of the right-hand path which ground some initiates sufficiently to activate the immense power of the sinister current. Only after a year or more of right-hand path study and practice might one’s guru see in the student the heroic disposition of one karmically suited to proceed to the left-hand path. While spontaneous awakenings to the left-hand path have been known to happen, the majority of initiates can only approach the dangerous force of the sinister current after much preparatory mental/emotional training and discipline. This underscores the neglected fact that the left-hand path is not a social identity or ”lifestyle” that can be adopted as casually as donning a T-shirt, reading a few books, or getting a new tattoo but is a rigorous practice that can only be realized through many years of intensive daily initiatory action.

A Sinister Current Without Sex?

One of the primary reasons why liberation in this lifetime can be realized more rapidly for those who have aligned themselves with the sinister current is that a specific physiological and spiritual exchange occurs through the union of sacred sexuality that can only be transmitted through intercourse. Left-hand path sexual rites performed when both partners are in an awakened state of consciousness are celebrations of self-deification, in which human beings bring the ecstatic sexual couplings of the divine realm into the mortal world. Through the rite of maithuna, left-hand path couples can carnally and spiritually embody the union of such divine consorts as Shiva and Shakti, Seth and Astarte, Woden and Freya, etc., thus elevating their consciousness to a nondual level of transformative ecstasy that occurs outside the boundaries of time and space. Mortal flesh, condemned by the majority of contemporary religions as an obstacle to spiritual development, or a necessary evil needed for procreation purposes, is experienced in the left-hand path as the living gateway to the divine.

The universal sinister tradition of the initiated human couple transcending duality through sexual union and thus becoming a third sacred presence is exemplified in the West by such semi-mythical pairs of consorts as Helen and Faust, Simon Magus and Helene, the magician Jesus and Mary Magdalene, and many others.

Considering the obvious centrality of illuminated Eros to the left-hand path, we must admit that we are often baffled when a number of our correspondents and students have asked us if actual sexual intercourse with another person is really necessary to left-hand path liberation. Although, as we have mentioned elsewhere, there is much more to the sinister current than sex, the unequivocal answer to this question can only be a resounding ”Yes!” As Demons of the Flesh states, one of the essential left-hand path principles is ”the transformation of human consciousness todivine consciousness via the manipulation of the sexual currents of the physical and subtle bodies through erotic rites.”

As should now be evident, the journey to liberation without a sexual consort is technically the right-hand path, and the journey to liberation with a sexual consort is the left-hand path. The transcendence of the ego and the realization of divine union can certainly be achieved through the non-sexual methods of the right-hand path, as is demonstrated by the many remarkable ascetic and renunciate initiates of many traditions. That we have encountered many individuals who call themselves ”left-hand path”, but who are lacking a sexual-initiatory partner (or more often any sexual partner) and who possess no understanding or experience of the feminine, sexual and meditative aspects of sinister discipline only speaks to the appallingly low level of understanding in the Western world concerning this tradition.

To the non-initiate, whose experience of sexuality and bodily pleasure may be distorted by negative cultural conditioning, the introduction of sexuality into a sacred context is often mistakenly misconstrued as the ordinary pursuit of sex for recreation. An important clarification for the prurient: Although the Liberation in ThisLifetime course provides detailed guidance in the practice of left-hand path sexual rites, the training does not include sexual contact between teachers and student.

The reason for this is simple. As we explain in Demons of the Flesh, ”The extreme potential for exploitation and self-delusion that any teacher/student power dynamic potentially provides becomes even more intensified once sex magic comes into the picture ... In all erotic interactions, the untrained will tend to project subjective overlays upon their partners. These projections can be deliberately utilized during sexual magic for sorcerous or initiatory objectives. When the partner is ostensibly one’s spiritual teacher, one can easily fall prey to unconscious imaginings that cloud the actual nature of the supposed teacher, idealizing or vilifing him or her according to circumstance.” It is necessary for sinister current initiates to find their own appropriate and consensual sexual partners. We counsel students in viable methods of forming an initiatory sexual bond, but we do not provide partners for them served up on a silver platter. This avoids the problems listed above, while preventing a sacred enterprise from being reduced to a metaphysical dating service or pseudo-mystical swinger’s club, as so has often occurred in Western esoteric circles.

The experience of enlightened sexual union is one of the central mysteries of the left-hand path, a numen that no words can possibly do justice. Which provides us with a convenient point of departure to exit the logical limitations of verbal thought and invoke the far more illuminating power of silence ...

"And the Flame whose Hidden NAME means Victory has given me a gift by giving to my Children what she sees in me. Struggle. Struggle overcomes Fate." -- _Book of the Heb-Sed_

I assert that I am the Avatar of Set - the Netjer against the Netjeru; Destroyer of Illusions; In Conflict with natural order; Exposer of lies; Bringer of Storms; Expander of Boundaries; Disrupter of the familiar.

Since the labor of thirty-six hours when I ripped forth from the womb and first saw the Red in November's morning, I have never abandoned the Eternal Struggle. My Fate: to Expose, Illuminate, Disillusion and Enlighten. Twice a High Priestess, I resisted the fetters of stagnation. Twice a High Priestess, I championed the scapegoats. Twice a High Priestess, I refused to submit to tyranny and oppression driven by human frailties. Twice a High Priestess, I have battled against corruption. I am labeled by my accusers as a despot for not bending my Setian Will. These were my crimes.

The proprietor of a Church is not a god. The overseer of a Temple is not a Pharaoh. Woefully, the Church remains the Temple's Teacher.

With disillusionment comes a curse. The curse of Knowledge. This fire within me would surely die were I to remain within a cocoon of endless hypocrisy, deceit, suspicion, delusion and manipulation.

I now take the Appropriate Action, the genuine Setian action. With the birthing knife of Set, I cut away from self-deception. I Storm forth into the harsh, burning foreign lands and leave the Orderly ruins of the Netjeru family who once invited the Storm.

I go with the Spirit of Set ceaselessly burning within me, as it had before I entered these Temple walls, and as it shall for evermore.

My Teaching can no longer be confined. The Order of Sekhmet continues cooperatively with other liberated Setian Orders and Elements. I wander the universe to share my Teaching now unhindered by the chains of stagnation. The Aeon expands beyond familiar walls, taking forms yet undreamed. All who read this are welcome to partake in the journey of Setian Teachers, regardless of formal affiliation.

With this spell I dissolve my bond with a non-profit California corporation known as the Temple of Set. I sever my bond with those few administrators who forcibly strangle the true nature of Set out of His Temple. With this spell I deepen my bond with the eternal reality that is the sacred House of Set, my State of Being remaining authentically its High Priestess. And yet I shall remain devoted to my friends who choose to remain within these walls, harboring them no ill will. I remain grateful to those extraordinary initiates, Companions of Set, who have nourished my initiation. I remain grateful to my enemies, whose every effort to thwart me has only strengthened my resolve. And that is all a part of HerStory.

Setians, it has been an honor to serve you and my affection for (most) of you remains as undiminished as the seven stars.